My defining decade

I made a video for my 30th birthday about the lessons that shaped my twenties.

My "defining decade" was inspired by the book of the same name, which I read at 21 and kept coming back to as it guided me throughout my twenties. If you're in your twenties, I recommend giving it a read.

I chose 13 lessons as 13 is a lucky number (both my husband and brother's birth date 😄)

Read the full poem ↓

"I turn 30 today. This is what I learnt from my defining decade.

1. Take care of yourself before life forces you to.
2. Do the thing that scares you before you feel ready. Even if your voice shakes, let it be heard anyway.
3. Don't be afraid to be misunderstood. You do not need to shrink yourself into a version people can easily explain.
4. Take the Eurostar. Fly to the other side of the world. Go to the place that has been sitting in your mind. Let the world remind you there is more than one way to live.
5. Be a beginner more often than you think. You are not starting again. You are carrying everything with you.
6. Leave the relationship when staying would cost you yourself. Some endings are respectful, full of love, and still necessary. You are allowed to grieve a decision you know is right.
7. Go far enough from home to hear your own voice again. Let that ancient city teach you that becoming happens σιγά σιγά.
8. Sometimes what you want arrives after you stop worshipping the version of it you imagined. The life you want is not only built by chasing. Sometimes it is built by becoming someone who can receive it.
9. The void cannot be filled with things, attention, or another plane ticket. Let love, faith, community, and something bigger than yourself meet you there.
10. Water your garden. The people you show up for, encourage, and love quietly become the community that carries you when things fall apart.
11. Build with heart. It is the part of work that survives every title, team, and ending.
12. Love is never wasted when it is shared. Even the love that hurt you can leave behind clarity, and proof that your heart still works.
13. Life will always begin again, maybe under an olive tree, with a melted Freddo espresso in your hand.

I used to ask people on my travels, "What is the meaning of life?" Everyone had a different answer. I think the answer is simpler than thought: the meaning is to live it."

The decade, year by year

2016 🇬🇧 🇪🇸

• Turned 20.
• Took a year out of my studies for a placement year at the university.
• Started learning, teaching, and building community through Code First Girls. We became #ShefCodeFirst.
• Went through a messy break-up.
• Began the first version of lifting, training, and moving for my mental health.
• Hit 50 published blog posts with "Sharing to Inspire."

2017 🇬🇧 🇮🇹 🇵🇹 🇫🇷 🇳🇱 🇺🇸

• Gave some of my first talks.
• Travelled without family for the first time.
• Kept saying yes to rooms I did not feel ready for yet.
• Started attending and organising student hackathons.
• Hit 100 published blog posts with "October, For Me."

2018 🇬🇧

• Graduated with Biomedical Sciences with Industry Experience from the University of Sheffield.
• My dad got rushed to hospital for a heart condition we didn't know about. It shook our whole family, took years to feel normal.
• Started my first tech job.
• Moved to Leeds.
• Continued building local community in public through Code First Girls, MedTech Sheffield, and Inspiring Figures.
• Won and was nominated for awards and features for my community work for the first time.

2019 🇬🇧 🇨🇻 🇩🇪 🇭🇺 🇫🇷 🇦🇹 🇬🇷 🇵🇹 🇨🇿 🇳🇴

• Continued building in public, with features across TV, radio, newspapers, and notably, the Yorkshire Post.
• Took the Eurostar around Europe, bringing only a backpack with me.
• Met Georgie for the first time in Germany, after years of online friendship.
• Hit 200 published blog posts with "12 months in."
• Visited Greece for the first time.

2020 🇬🇧

• Survived the global pandemic.
• Dedicated myself to AWS and cloud, taking several certification exams while learning in public through livestreams.
• Kept creating, writing, and speaking while the world moved online.
• Built an at-home gym in my tiny one-bed apartment.

2021 🇬🇧 🇮🇨

• Left my first tech job to join another one I was inspired by.
• Became an AWS Community Builder.
• Earned my first $1K speaking fee, the first time I realised my experience could be valued in that way.
• Started Ladies in DevOps, which reached 600 members in one day with several companies backing it.
• Joined Gitpod after a mutual X DM opened the door.
• Hit 300 published blog posts with "As of today, I’m building communities full-time."
• Michael became my mentor, and still is.

2022 🇬🇧 🇵🇹 🇮🇨 🇪🇸 🇭🇷 🇬🇷 🇺🇸

• Ended my first serious long-term relationship. Sold almost everything I owned.
• Took my first real solo-travel chapter, living out of a 40L backpack.
• I met Jacob for the first time, who became a great friend and trusted colleague I worked with at two different companies!
• Travelled to Athens for the first time, and hung out with Georgie again.
• I fell in love with Crete.
• Got promoted to head up community building at Gitpod.
• Hit the earnings goal I had set for my twenties, four years early.
• Hit 10k followers on X, then jumped in a pool in Valencia to celebrate.
• Joe visited me in Athens for the first time, then pretty much every year.

2023 🇬🇷 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇩🇪 🇦🇹 🇳🇱 🇫🇷

• Lived more of the digital nomad chapter I had imagined.
• Let Athens, and the people I met there, change me. Made friends with Joanna who made my life better there.
• Started to become more confident in my community work. I became the face of Gitpod.
• Organised and hosted CDE Universe in under a month.

2024 🇬🇷 🇺🇸 🇫🇷 🇦🇹 🇩🇪 🇳🇱 🇪🇸 🇬🇧

• Travelled all over Greece and started considering myself a local 😄
• Said goodbye to Gitpod, and a role I loved as I navigated my first layoff. I was surprised by the backing from my community.
• Earned my first $1K through consulting and advisory work in community.
• Joined Vercel as an IC, and was promoted to lead the team within 6 months.
• Started boxing.
• Started embracing my naturally curly hair, after hiding from it for years with chemically straight hair. It changed my whole look :)

2025 🇬🇷 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇨🇭 🇮🇸

• Earned my first $1 from tweeting, a tiny but funny full-circle moment after years of building online.
• Travelled to America the most for work, and became known for my community work there.
• Had a girls trip with Georgie in NYC.
• Celebrated one year at Vercel.
• Realised love is never wasted when it's shared.
• Met Oliver in Athens. We were at the right place at the right time on the 17th of May.
• Officially handed in the keys to my tiny apartment in Athens. I haven't been back since. I moved to a place by the sea, in Brighton.
• Returned to faith and began learning about Christianity from the beginning.
• Oliver proposed to me under the Northern Lights in Iceland on the 23rd of December. I said yes 😄

2026 🇬🇧 🇺🇸

• Reached roughly 40k followers across platforms.
• Tied the knot with Oliver in our small legal civil ceremony on 14th of March.
• Started attending church almost every Sunday, and prayer became part of my daily practice.
• MC'd React Miami.
• Made the difficult decision to leave Vercel, after building my life's best work (and team!).
• Joined OpenAI's Developer Experience team. In my first week, Ona (formerly Gitpod), entered an agreement to join OpenAI and I supported a builders event with Vercel. 😆
• Turned 30.

Along the way, I made friends. I lost touch with people. I learned the hard way that not everyone can be trusted, and I learned that closing your heart completely is not the answer either. I trusted too easily. I fell in love. I was hurt. I was betrayed. I had to come back to my own gut, again and again.

I learned that home can be a city, a person, a church pew, a voice note from a friend, or a small apartment you eventually hand the keys back to. I learned that love can change shape and still matter. I learned that community is not just something I build for work, but something that has carried me through the hardest parts of my life.

I found my calling, worked hard to climb, and did not give up even when I wanted to. I also got extremely lucky. The right people backed me. The wrong rooms taught me. The doors that closed still moved me somewhere.

Most of all, I learned that beginning again does not mean starting from nothing. I carried every version of myself with me: the girl who left home, the woman who moved countries, the friend, the sister, the daughter, the wife, the writer, and the person still learning how to trust God, herself, and the life in front of her.

I see the thousands of you who come back here every day, every week, every time I write a blog post or publish anything online. Thank you for building with me, growing with me, and sharing this very short life with me in my own little corner of the internet.

Here's to the next decade of living my healthiest, happiest life... If you know, you know. 🥹

Thank you for being here, friends! :)